You’ve probably noticed it many times: the match is over, footballers exchange a few words — and almost immediately cover their mouths with their hand or shirt, as if they’re not on a stadium pitch but in a room with a “classified” label. This habit has become so common that even amateurs and children have picked it up. Let’s figure out why this happens and what exactly they are trying to hide from cameras and prying eyes.
After a recent general meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB), officials announced an unexpected decision: under new rules planned for introduction before the World Cup this summer, any player who covers their mouth while talking to an opponent could be punished.
The decision came in response to an incident where Real Madrid winger Vinícius Júnior claimed that during the Champions League match on February 17, Benfica player Gianluca Prestianni racially abused him. Prestianni had hidden what he said by covering his mouth with his shirt. UEFA suspended Prestianni for one game and launched an investigation into the allegations.
Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois said he would not be against a ban on mouth covering if it helps eradicate racism in football.
“The Prestianni situation is complicated because in such a case, it will always be one player’s word against another’s,” said the Belgian. “We are 100% with Vinícius, who has suffered a lot because of this (racist abuse), but when the mouth is covered, you can never know for sure, and Benfica has to protect their player. It’s up to UEFA and the institutions to take action.” The wait wasn’t long.
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While the intention behind such a measure may be good — to prevent players from hiding offensive behavior — the question is whether it can be realistically controlled. In the chaos of a match, will referees always be able to distinguish whether a player is talking to a teammate or an opponent?
And remembering that players have habitually covered their mouths with their hands or shirts for years, isn’t there a risk of punishing actions that have become automatic? The practice is so widespread that you often see amateurs and youth teams covering their mouths — even when there isn’t a single TV camera nearby.
All this leads to the question: why do players hide what they say, even in the most routine situations? Part of the answer, of course, lies in the intense scrutiny under which football lives today. It wasn’t always like this. Consider the example of Didier Deschamps and Roger Lemerre from 2000.
They were standing a couple of meters apart, right in the center of the pitch at Feyenoord’s De Kuip stadium, engaged in an animated conversation. Lemerre and Deschamps, the coach and captain of the French national team, should have been basking in glory: they had just become only the second team in men’s football to hold both the World Cup and European Championship titles simultaneously.
In the Euro 2000 final, they had beaten Italy 2-1 thanks to a golden goal from David Trezeguet. But the conversation looked serious, and their body language was tense. A week earlier, the French press had reported that Deschamps, then 31, was planning to retire from international football after the tournament and felt his role as the team’s unifying force was not fully appreciated.
Was that what they were discussing? French TV channel LCI saw an opportunity: the camera was capturing everything without interference, so the channel brought in a lip-reading specialist to provide subtitles. According to them, Lemerre was urging Deschamps to postpone his decision. “Now is the time to celebrate,” he said. “But I need to make a choice,” Deschamps replied. “I’m tired of it, I really am tired of it.”
That scene in Rotterdam is worth revisiting because it’s unlikely the world will see anything like it at this summer’s World Cup. Those images belong to a different era, when players and coaches could talk to each other calmly without looking over their shoulders. Nowadays, footballers almost habitually cover their mouths while speaking — with their hand or by pulling up their shirt.
Is it paranoia? In some cases, perhaps, but lip-readers do sometimes try to find out what footballers are saying. They are used, among other things, to analyze controversial incidents: for example, to understand what Italian Marco Materazzi said to Zinédine Zidane before the Frenchman headbutted him in the 2006 World Cup final, and what John Terry said to Anton Ferdinand in the Chelsea vs. Queens Park Rangers match in October 2011. In that case, the FA found Terry guilty of “abusive and/or insulting words and/or behavior,” suspending him for four matches and stripping him of the England captaincy (in a separate legal proceeding, Terry was acquitted of the charge of making racist remarks).
